


The truth and nothing but the truth

by Rasberrysmiles



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Pre-Season/Series 03, not sure whether the violence counts as graphic but I tagged it as such anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-07
Updated: 2016-01-07
Packaged: 2018-05-12 11:27:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5664445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rasberrysmiles/pseuds/Rasberrysmiles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he tells Thursday about the month that may very well have come to define the rest of his life, Morse tells the truth</p><p>He just doesn’t mention the other thing</p>
            </blockquote>





	The truth and nothing but the truth

**Author's Note:**

> A headcanon that grew into a drabble. Poor Morse never has it easy.

When he tells Thursday about the month that may very well have come to define the rest of his life, Morse tells the truth. At first it is hard, the words clog up the back of his throat and he has to force them out, but once he has started he finds it easier to keep going. He talks about the isolation, the fear, the guilt- how, because of his own inability to act, he’d almost lost the man that’s become like a father to him. And it really is true because for once he is too raw, too frayed at the edges to tell anything the truth. 

He just doesn’t mention the other thing. At the moment it doesn’t really feel important enough to tell. It seems to diminish compared to that godawful feeling of not knowing; of being left with his thoughts as his sole companions; of the endless cycle of what if what if what if that just kept going until he feared he was going mad. 

Now there is no use dwelling on it. He’s been through worse after all, and it’ not like he thinks about it often. 

It had happened about a week and a half into his imprisonment. By then he’d lost count of exactly how many days had passed. He’d lain at his cot, facing the ceiling with his eyes closed, settling in for yet another sleepless night. Funny how he hardly slept, now that sleep seemed to be the only thing for him to do. 

Then all of a sudden the door to his cell had been flung open. It had happened very quickly after that; he’d tried to stand up but someone had grabbed him and a throaty voice had whispered in his ear that if he were to make even the smallest of sounds he would die. There had been two other men in the room, big and burly and easily able to overpower him. He he’d recognised them as fellow inmates, which in itself hadn’t been very surprising. A copper, especially one with such a long arrest record, wasn’t bound to make a lot of friends in prison. 

Weak from exhaustion and lack of proper food, there’d been very little he could do when they started beating him. 

Their blows and kicks hadn’t seemed to cease for a long time, not even when the man holding him had let him crumple to the floor. After a while he’d curled into a ball, trying to make himself as small as possible and protecting his head. 

Then suddenly it had all been over and he was left on his own to pass out on the cold and grimy floor of the cell. The day after he’d woken up with a murderous headache and spectacular bruising all over his torso. A few of his ribs might’ve been cracked, or at least bruised, but it was not like prison meant any particularly strenuous activity, so it mattered very little. 

It was only afterwards that he’d realised that the only way that the men could’ve gotten into his cell was if the door had been open. And the only person with access to the door was the guard, who unsurprisingly didn’t like him either. Being arrested for killing one of your own didn’t make you very popular amongst both guards and inmates it seemed. 

It never happened again during the reset of his stay in that cell. When he got ut, Morse resolved himself not to think about it anymore. And he doesn’t, at least not often.  
Yet some nights when he hasn’t had enough to drink before bed in order to fall into dreamless unconsciousness, he is back in the cell again. There are arms holding him down and he’s unable to fight back and the blows just keeps coming and he can’t breathe. When he wakes up he finds himself tangled in his sheets and curled into a tiny ball, tears and sweat dampening the pillow. 

But all things considered, it really doesn’t matter. He’s been trough worse before after all. And if he feels a pang of nervousness every time he comes across someone larger than him (no hard feat really, poor eating and sleeping habits has rendered him eternally skinny) it is not something he dwells on. 

So when he tells Thursday about his time in prison he tells the truth, just not all of it. The important parts yes, but not all of it. But he is over it, has been over it ever since the night it happened.


End file.
